The Institute for Law & Organizing uses collaborative, power-building campaigns to combat anti-Black racism related to dispossession and displacement from housing and other property.
In 2017, the Institute’s Founder Professor Bernadette Atuahene, a property law scholar at the University of Southern California Gould School of Law, who focuses on land stolen from people in the African Diaspora, conducted empirical research that uncovered the systemic and illegal over assessment of property taxes in Detroit, a city with an 80% Black population. Consequently, one in three Detroit homes have completed the property tax foreclosure process since 2009. This is not just a Detroit problem, however. Across the country, Black and Latino homeowners pay a 10 to 13 percent higher property tax rate than similarly situated white homeowners, making this injustice an overlooked driver of the ever-widening racial wealth gap in the United States. To address this crisis and build an organization that can tackle other forms of anti-Black racism related to dispossession and displacement from land and housing, Professor Atuahene created the Institute later that year.
The Institute uses law, community organizing, and research to fuel its campaigns, which are responsive to community priorities and direction. The Institute’s first campaign is the Coalition for Property Tax Justice (illegalforeclosures.org), which has three goals: 1) Stop illegally inflated property taxes in Detroit and throughout the nation; 2) Stop the ongoing property tax foreclosures in Detroit until the City calculates them in accordance with the law; and 3) Fight for compensation for affected Detroit homeowners. Once this campaign is over, community leaders have made clear that the next campaign must deal with home repair.
